What makes it different from others?

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

One of the best films i have seen

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Madhouse (1981) ** (out of 4) Julia (Trish Everly) suffers from various mental issues due to the abuse that she suffered from her twin sister. Years later the sister is deformed with a skin virus but before their birthday someone shows up at Julia's school and begins killing her friends.Director Ovidio G. Assonitis will always be remembered for THE EXORCIST rip-off BEYOND THE DOOR as well as TENTACLES and to a lesser extent for firing James Cameron on PIRANHA PART TWO. Before he fired Cameron he was directing this film, a bizarre mix of American slasher and Italian giallo. I must admit that I wasn't overly familiar with the picture until Arrow Video announced its release and afterwards I'm a bit confused about what I watched.For the most part if you're a horror fan you'll want to check this film out, although it falls well short of what I'd consider a good movie. I'm really not sure what the film was trying to do other than to show off some gory death scenes every fifteen-minutes or so. The story itself is, I think, supposed to be some sort of mystery but it's pretty easy to figure out what the twist is going to be. With knowing the twist, that pretty much takes away any suspense or mystery. Another problem with the picture is the fact that the death scenes are so spread apart. It's too bad there either wasn't much more of a story or perhaps the body count jacked up.I thought Assonitis managed to create a nice setting and there's some nice cinematography as well. The film kept me mildly entertained through the first hour but things just really started to drag during the finale. I won't spoil who the killer is but I must say the murder of the killer is quite excellent. It's too bad the rest of the film wasn't as good. I did also enjoy the subplot dealing with the murderous dog. CUJO didn't have anything on this mutt! Again, MADHOUSE isn't a great movie or even a good one but there are enough interesting moments to make it worth sitting through.

Madhouse is thematically (and sometimes visually) similar to the Canadian slasher Happy Birthday To Me, but it goes about telling its story of sibling slashing in a very different way.Shot in Georgia, but using an Italian creative team, Madhouse has a strange sense of time and place. Where is this exactly? It it in the past? Is it now? It's one of those things you'll only get when you mix and match crews and locations like this.The acting from lead Trish Everly is quite good and she makes for a sympathetic heroine who just wants to be left alone by her sociopathic, deformed sister who just escaped from a loony bin and has brought her vicious dog with her.At this point, pretty much everyone in our heroine's life is fodder for her sister's knife blade and dog's sharp teeth, which leads to some very creepy moments of victims wandering around a spooky Georgia mansion and getting picked off one by one. It all culminates in the nastiest corpse birthday party since...well, Happy Birthday To Me. The ending even got a real jolt out of me.If I had any complaints, it would be that the reveal of a 2nd killer mid way through the film is accompanied by a lifeless, suspense-free chase scene that goes on far too long. It's also at that point that the film becomes a bit too campy due to both the killer and victim's performances.The visuals are stunning, the music score is super weird, and there's enough gore to satisfy gore hounds, but not turn off more sophisticated viewers. Definitely worth your time!

Sweet Julia Sullivan (a fine and appealing performance by the lovely Trish Everly) works as a teacher for deaf children at an elementary school. Julia's angry and hideously disfigured twin sister Mary (intensely played with seething rage by Allison Biggers) escapes from an asylum a few days prior to Julia's twenty-fifth birthday. Soon thereafter Julia's friends are getting bumped off left and right.Director/co-writer Ovidio G. Assonitis relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, take time to develop Julia as a character the viewer truly cares about, does a nice job of crafting a creepy atmosphere, grounds the premise in a believable everyday reality (for example, we get to see Julia at her job teaching deaf kids), and pulls out all the macabre stops for the super twisted climax. The sound acting by the capable cast keeps this movie humming: Dennis Robertson as the jovial Father James, Morgan Hart as Julia's spunky gal pal Helen, Michael MacRae as Julia's affable doctor boyfriend Sam Edwards, Edith Ivey as loopy landlady Amantha, and Jerry Fujikawa as bumbling handyman Mr. Kimura. The scenes with a vicious Rottweiler attacking folks and ripping out their throats are quite brutal and gory. Riz Ortolani's shuddery score hits the spine-tingling spot. Roberto D'Ettore Piazolli's glossy cinematography provides a slick'n'stylish look. A worthy slice'n'dice item.

Red herrings abound in this Video Nasty which was released around the same time as Happy Birthday To Me. They have similar endings and apparently it can't be agreed upon as to which film was released first and who stole from whom. Most people will probably prefer the better known Happy Birthday and will forget this film, but I found it to be one of the better Nasties.Aside from a bogus score, this slasher film is a semi-giallo(OK, not really except for maybe a few scant scenes and you have to pay attention) that has some good moments and, as you might expect, some decent gore. Trish Everly plays Julia, a woman approaching her 25th birthday and her nut case twin sister lives in the mental ward at the hospital. Their parents are dead and the only relative they have left is their uncle, a priest. And, as you'd expect, the director takes the high road and the priest is, of course, involved to some extent in the subsequent murders. Everly, who went on to do nothing after his film, lives in a large house that's been renovated into apartments, and various workers and inhabitants at the home get bumped off. She thinks her sister is planning something for their 25th birthday, and lo and behold, her sister escapes from the mental ward. Her sister, Mary, also has a trained Rottweiler who will kill on command. A surprisingly touching scene shows Julia explaining to the deaf students in her class how a fellow deaf student was killed by the dog. These are real deaf children with varying degrees of speech impediments and other problems, and it brings a tear to my eye. Sniff. But, I digress. Back to the murders. There are actually three killers in this film: two humans and the dog. As others have noted, the dog is the star of the show as he bites throats and rips off hands. Sadly, an obvious puppet is used too often during these scenes as the director obviously didn't know how to handle animal shots.Julia herself is even a suspect, though not outright to the other characters, but to the viewers; her comments in certain scenes make her an unreliable narrator of her past. Be warned if you are an animal or puppet lover: the Rottweiler gets his due towards the end of the film. This is one of the reasons the film made "the list" though there are a few other scenes, such as repeated blows to the back from an axe later on with plenty of chunky goodness to go around.As previously stated, this Video Nasty is some of the better fare on the notorious list and I'll recommend it as a Nasty fan. The film's greatest flaw is the abominable soundtrack. I am rather surprised that Everly never made any other films.